The 68-year-old Iowa veteran has had to deal with a host of medical problems, beginning with two combat injuries he suffered during his service in Vietnam.

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"January 1st of '69, I was on a mission and I got hit by a hand grenade booby trap," Scott said.

This was after getting hit in the chin with a piece of scrap metal a few months prior.

Scott received two Purple Hearts for those incidents, and a third for his exposure to Agent Orange.

"Kinda tells you I didn't know how to duck, don't it," Scott said with a laugh.

The vet's sense of humor and positive attitude, he thinks, were key to his survival then, and are key to his survival now. More recently, Scott beat esophageal cancer, then heart failure, which required him to get a heart transplant.

"He developed a clot in the pump and so he required a heart transplant a little bit more urgently," Nebraska Medicine cardiac surgeon Dr. John Um said.

Scott was life-flighted to Nebraska Medicine in August. Doctors say the battery-powered pump that Scott had installed last year needed to be removed.

"Everything just turned black, and what it was, was my heart pump was shaving the clot off and I was having mini strokes," Scott said.

Scott was put on the heart transplant list and waited in the hospital for two months.

"If it wouldn't have been for somebody donating a heart I probably wouldn't be here now," Scott said.